


Blondes and Bugs

by Zoya1416



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Bugs, F/M, Hair, absent-minded professors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:58:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1230736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martya Koudelka never felt pretty compared to her sisters, until she started coloring her hair. But an absent-minded professor didn't even notice at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blondes and Bugs

**Author's Note:**

> All Vorkosigan is LMB's.

For Martya, it was all about the hair. Delia and Olivia, the two queens of the family, had the type of deep gold hair that everyone liked. Thick, straight hair, perfect for putting up in traditional Barrayaran styles. Delia's was more golden, like new honey, and Olivia's was the luscious almost brown of honey about to crystallize. What was most remarkable were the highlights and shifting colors which it would take a hundred marks to recreate in expensive salons.

And the little shrimp Kareen had the buttercup yellow which had been almost white when she was little. Her curls made her hair too lightweight to put up, but when short, it bounced around her head, making her cute instead of stately.

Martya's hair was neither. If you had to call it something, it was a dull light mousy brown, and flyaway curly. It had a little yellow in the summertime. You could call it blond only by courtesy.

“I hate my hair!” she complained to Ma, for the thousandth time. “And I'm uglyyyy!I don't have any boobs, and, and,”

“Your hair's okay,” said Ma, whose own gold was changing to light silver gracefully.  
“And really, if you smiled more, and didn't frown so much...”

Martya scowled harder and ran from the room, crying.

That was at fifteen. Now she was twenty, and it hadn't gotten any better. Since Kareen was off studying at Beta Colony, it was worse. The others got plenty of invitations to parties, horseback rides, picnics, and now Delia had Duv. Martya was invited along only if they needed someone to make up the right number. She kept flipping through fashion magazines masochistically, until one day it hit her. Strawberry blonde. No one had that interesting color, and there was so much possibility.

Ma said no at first, and then finally relented after more tears. She treated Martya to a trip to Vasha's, a premier salon. When it was over, she couldn't believe her eyes. The reddish gold-brown color was fantastic! Perfect! Even Delia and Olivia were a little jealous.

Some new dresses to match the color, some jewelry, and she was changed. Really, really pretty at last! She smiled more and went out on some of her own dates.

Then Mark and Kareen came home in crisis, dragging the gawky Dr.Enrique Borgos and what looked like two hundred cockroaches with them. These, she soon learned, were butter bugs, which could eat just about any form of vegetation and turn it into a perfect food, balanced in protein, fat, and carbohydrates. The process was a...bit messy, because they regurgitated the butter, but not much worse than honey.

He held one on his hand, and it hissed, digging its claws in. "They do that when they're happy," he said, gently stroking along its back. 

She was fascinated by the whole project and told him so.  
“I do like your bugs. They take a little getting used to, and I'm glad Ekaterin is working on esthetics, but when you fed them roses, the butter smelled wonderful.”

“Do you think so? But I can't afford roses. And I need new tubs. And I don't have a place for my journals, and accurate, detailed, timely record-keeping is uniquely important. I have to precision-tune the microbial suite for each diet. It worries me.”

“Don't be worried. I'll help. I think it will be fun to try different flavorings.”

Martya had always been considered the practical one, the smart one nobody liked because she was so snappish. But now she was coming into her own.

“Mark, Enrique needs an office fitted out. He's getting behind on paperwork, and getting flustered. You don't want any more butter down the drain, do you?"

She'd convinced/sweet-talked/ brow-beaten Miles into given them another small room and then created a snug, well organized space, using skills she didn't know she had. She scoured second-hand furniture places for comconsole desks, chairs, file cabinets, and shelves, and then dickered them down a few marks more.

She and Enrique worked together for hours. She learned to pronounce all his polysyllabic biochemical words, and in return she started teaching him French and Russian. It was the most fun she'd ever had.

One day she was in the basement office, recalculating yields again, worrying about how much of everything they'd need for the inauguration of the maple ambrosia, and what the costs were, when she realized she couldn't hear Enrique. He must have gone upstairs to Vorkosigan House proper, where they weren't really welcomed. Concerned, she ran after him, like chasing a puppy you were afraid might piddle on the carpet.

She caught up with him coming back from a consult in the kitchen with Ma Kosti.  
He'd wandered into one of the family rooms, and was gawking at all the pictures. Team Koudelka was represented often enough, in activities with Miles.

Enrique turned his head. “This is you, right? In the boat here?”

It was a pre-strawberry-blonde photo cube and she was scowling horribly.

Reluctantly she said, “Yes, that's me.”

“So your hair isn't that red color? It's really brown?”

“Yes!” she flung back angrily. “I dyed my hair, so what?”

He hugged her.  
“Oh, I'm so happy!”

“Why, for heaven's sake?”

“Well, I didn't want to say anything, but on Escobar, red hair is considered very unlucky. A concatenation of old religious superstitions concurrent with the extremely low percentage of red-haired births, and the collective memory of one insane war leader who lead redheaded berserkers in a horrendous slaughter have so distorted the public's consciousness and prejudice--”

She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Wait. You're saying that you like my hair color that mousy brown? It's thin and limp and curly.”

“But my hair is curly, too. The combination of our two genomes has a significant possibility, no, um, probability of creating offspring with brown hair, very crinkly, which is the archetype, the epitome of perceived attractiveness in the majority of Escobaran populations--”

She reached up and put her arms around his scrawny neck, kissing him to shut him up. 

“Offspring? Offspring? Enrique Borgos, did you just propose to me?”

He frowned in the cute little way which meant he was processing new data.

“I suppose I did. It's not consistent with what I had planned; I was going to get Ekaterin to make me some extra special bugs after the Wedding, but--” he smiled in a goofy way.

“Enrique, yes, yes, yes ! I'll stop coloring my hair tomorrow.”

They found their way back down to Enrique's office, which had been rearranged recently.

She'd had a couch put in because he was getting exhausted. It turned out to be perfectly comfortable.


End file.
